From today's Independent on Sunday - 'What’s so good about holidaying abroad?'

Essentially a super-sized puff for 'Sod Abroad' it also provides some (I am sure) interesting background on how I came to write the book..

Plus, it reveals some harrowing insights into my painstaking research:

Before I went on that holiday I had just assumed I didn't like camping. Now I know. Some magical alchemy about getting enough tents together in one place attracts rain like a picnic attracts wasps. It poured for two weeks, pausing only to allow a sinister fog to roll in from the sea every breakfast. To make the situation even more comical our daughter had just reached that sofa-surfing stage, where a child is almost ready to walk but needs regularly spaced items of furniture as staging posts. Solid pieces of furniture aren't easy to come by on a campsite, and as a consequence every adult in the party was pressed into service as an emergency baby-walker, resulting in long-term lumbar damage that was in no way exacerbated by having to sleep on a thin foam mattress.

Finally, and I'm sure you'll see this as a bonus, there's a nice picture of me reclining on my sofa and reading the splendid (and highly recommended) My Little Armalite

119% of adults in the western world have a blog these days

But do they have an automatic blog post generator?

Well yes.

Yes they do.

Because it's out there on the Internet.

(excellent, if rather off-topic, find by Tamar)

Sod Abroad: Best price guide

If, by some appalling oversight, you haven't bought my spiffy collection of light comic essays about the iniquities of travel yet, then here's something handy. A constantly updated guide to the cheapest online prices so you can buy knowing that you've got the funniest treatise about staycations available, by the nicest known author, at the lowest possible price.

You could probably use it to find the best deals on other books too. If you wanted any of them.

Bear in mind, too, that even if you have got a copy of 'Sod Abroad', it makes an ideal gift for people who either don't like holidays, or like them a little too much, or feel fairly sanguine either way but need to have an inexpensive paperback given to them for some reason.

After all, it's got stuff about food, booze, bikinis, illegal drugs, sex, suntans and nazis - so there really is something for everyone!

Schott's Almanac of New Tourism

Lots of variety here, as one might expect from the master of miscellany, but I detect a pleasingly negative tone overall.

Take a look at the PDF & see!

Moby says aeroplanes are a great way to travel - as long as you don't wear glasses & like bad smells

This terrific bit from the online journal of ambient electro-advert music pioneer and all-round fellow bald chap Moby:

"I was on a flight recently and I was sitting next to a very professional business woman. I'm guessing she was 48 years old, very affluent and successful and poised. 15 minutes into the flight she took an Ambien and went to sleep. 90 minutes later she woke up, looked at me and said, 'I like your glasses'. She took my glasses and tried them on. She then sat for a second, farted very loudly, and went back to sleep."

"When she woke up later I could tell that she had absolutely no recollection of waking up and taking my glasses and farting loudly. If you're flying and you want to sleep you might want to think twice about what sleep drugs you're taking. Some sleep drugs probably should be reconsidered at 38,000 feet in the company of complete strangers."

So, two more things to be added to the list of airborne inconveniences - untoward ocular interference and intimate ercutations from people to whom you have not been introduced. I'm keeping a list of these, and it's getting rather long.

Jet set to 'blow' instead of 'suck' - hilarity ensues

It's a mistake any of us could have made. If we'd been entrusted with the cleaning of a very expensive aeroplane and somehow distracted at a crucial moment.

It didn't happen to us though. It happened to this poor lady. So let's take a moment to point and laugh.

I expected a Canary, I got a Turkey

Blame early morning check-ins. Blame sloppy staff who haven't checked the tickets properly. Don't, whatever you do, blame the passengers for not paying attention to where they were being shipped. It sounds to me like they're annoyed enough already.

Actually, we shouldn't be assigning blame, but thanks - this one's a purler!

A family setting off on a five-star holidays travelled 2,000 miles out of their way after they were given boarding passes for the wrong flight.

Charlie Coray, his wife, Tania, and daughter, Phoebe, 9, were caught in a mix-up at a check-in desk before their week's holiday in the Canary Islands.The family realised the mistake only after the plane landed and the air stewardess announced: “Welcome to Turkey”.

An investigation was started after it emerged that the family were given the wrong boarding passes at Cardiff airport for their holiday in Lanzarote. Mrs Coray, 44, a teacher, said: “It was unbelievable. I know they send luggage to the wrong places but not people.” Mr Coray, 47, an engineer, said: “It was about 6.30 in the morning when we arrived at Cardiff airport and we were directed to the check-in desk. We did not realise that more than one flight was being checked in there. We were half-asleep. When we were called to the gate we gave them our boarding passes, got on the plane and fell asleep.”

The Corays, from Llanishen, Cardiff, had booked an all-inclusive holiday with First Choice in a five-star hotel. Instead they arrived at Bodrum airport where they had to pay a £10 visa charge per person before boarding a plane back to Cardiff.

RELATED LINKS

• Holiday hell for travel companies

They have accepted First Choice's offer of a holiday in Ibiza because they could not get a flight to Lanzarote.A spokesman for the handling agents Servisair apologised and said that the staff member who accepted them on to the wrong flight had been suspended pending a hearing. A spokeswoman for First Choice said that an investigation was under way and that the Coray family would be refunded in full for any additional expenses incurred.